plutonium, tritium, carbon tet ro chloride and a number of different things in the environment, and we had no idea. later, like many kids in my neighborhood, i worked at the plant myself, and, um, got a sense of what it was like to be on the nofdz the plant. there was one evening when i came home from working at rocky flats and turned on the television, and there was a show on nightline that, it was an expose of what was really happening at the plant. and it was the first time that i really had an awareness, i really had an understanding of what was happening at iraqi flats and -- rocky plattes platd how extraordinary the contamination was. it was on that day that i decided to quit my job, and that was the day i decided that i would write a book about it. it took me about ten years of research and writing to pull this story together, and i wanted to write a book that reads like a novel, but it's very heavily footnoted, and everything in the book is factual. but i wanted to write this story from the perspective of all of the different kinds of people whose lives had been affected by roc